Issue 10

“How I want
Bokchoy & MSG
Packets that make my tongue easier
To exterminate”

“There is no solution for the wilderness
recasting the material in my blood.”

“This series of sculptural stripper/hooker heels ('Cut by the Blade, Polished by the Fire') explores the beauty and brutality of the sex work industry.”

Demetrius, lost or lucid, eventually wanders into the Day Room to rally his troops. Helps a physician attendant change the TV channel to make the rowdier patients quiet. Pulls his teammate Elezi not just from his chair but also the medication’s sleepy depths, cajoles Big Richard to abandon his precious iPad (permitted only due to years of good behavior), since Big R is the best shuffler to ever do it, trades two cookies and an orange so Angel will rush through his evening prayers, and finally, finally Demetri can play Spades.

“the velvet of your cheek relights
my memory like a torch / opens
my mouth with a wrench / presses the silver coin of my
want into your hand / “

“When I describe this exhibit, I frequently narrate the images. Separately, I narrate how the exhibit made me react, or how my uncle jokingly called me “import,” a word that sometimes made me cry. (I could not determine for myself if I was a colonial good, or, like the items in the balikbayan box, something precious returned home.)”

“My Nani passed away two years ago, and the house has since been sold, but this image feels like a love letter to my childhood, to that home, and to the warmth and love that lived within its walls.”

“Ma’s dowry-laden boatspoon shuffled

between spices like naani’s kahaniyaan—

interweaving spices across porous borders."

“Her hands passed over small grapes
to select perfectly round baubles, some clean enough to eat 
straight from the vine, others brushed with a dusting of gold pollen 
she’d wipe on her dress.”

“Once upon a time, a grandmother sewed a pelt quilt. Racoon, goat, squirrel, one iguana and two snakes. A menagerie of quietude.”

“So, let us both recognize the trap: there will come a time
when you leave me and the winged seeds of this tree will still blossom.
My heart will sprint like a rabbit, and you will be the one caught
in the snare you hold open, the wire biting your own hand.”

“sometimes i like to pretend i’m so pretty i barely exist: 
just a bit of gloss over everything. no plot, just perfect curve 
of my character arc: smooth as galatea repetrified.”

Marine-themed mixed media visual art

“in this house, on a street named  for its terminus at the ocean, i scrubbed out the stains of  creatures who came before me, so as to continue the cycle,  & create our own stains.”

“Charlotte keeps men 
in a holding pattern until 
the fifth date.”

“But his voice:
a kind of mochi-
infused bourbon howl.”

“Tonight, the hazed New York landscape outside my balcony trembles.”

“I’ve seen how the eyes 
of the leaves, even half withered on winter trees, 
light up with a teardrop of snow…”

“Yes, there is still joy to be found,

even when we cannot stop our loved ones from dying."

“…when we engage with poems, we are in dialogue – within our creative community, with the envisioned reader, with our interior selves, with fragmented and flashbulb memories & the characters of them, with unresolved pasts & half-imagined futures, with nature, the unnatural systems that govern us & the elusive universe that surrounds it all.”

“some apes using tools, tools made of sticks — it’s just — the point, how to get around teeth, claws, red tips.”

“The cannoli were filled to order with ricotta, and one could choose which toppings would be dusted over their glazed and crunchy tops: pistachio, chocolate chips, maraschino cherry, candied orange peels.”

“Let me press my mouth to the flowers and mango on your skin. I am holding more than diasporas in my hands.”

“I feel you more in the filament.
If I were more romantic, I would shower you
with garlic, lemongrass, and scallion…”

“I pray by the trees, I pray by the water, I pray by the dirt. And at night, when I must be a servant to my private, pulsing worship I know You see me and I know You watch me decide whether or not I should wash off the anointed oil that coats my fingers.”

“Four days after the news of  Ricky’s death, you stroll the East Village in a fur coat and a lingering guilt in your sternum. You can’t  decode it. It's not as if you killed the guy.”